There is an interesting debate going on in the Assembly at the moment about the safety of children travelling to school. Some of the discussion has arisen from the sad death of Stuart Cuningham Jones in a school bus accident and his family's campaign to ensure that there are seat belts on all school buses.
The bus that takes my children to school already has seat belts for each passenger, but the children won't use them. Those who do wear them during their first days in the new school are ridiculed by the other children. The culture of the school bus encourages (bullies even) children not to use the seat belts provided for their safety. I hope that the Assembly in its further discussions about this important topic will look at the school bus culture and at ways of encouraging students to use seat belts, having seat belts on school buses will not provide any safety for our children unless they are used.
yeh they need to look at the whole bullying culture. The PC brigade banned the cane and there is probably more physical violence pupilonpupil than ever
ReplyDeleteWhen I was in school, many years ago, the cane was used with a vengeance. The way to prove that you were "tough" "cool" etc was to show that you had no fear of the cane.
ReplyDeleteI started smoking at 9 years old in order to prove to my mates that I was "brave enough" to do so knowing that six of the best from the head and a belting off my Dad would be the consequence of being caught.
Young people can be reasoned with. Reasoning with them would be a much better way of changing their anti seat belt culture than trying to thrash it out of them.
i work on buses for a living and the seat belt thing comes up over and over again. the best thing we can do is put our time into making the buses safer without the use of seat belts.
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